Well pleased as Luther and his associates certainly were in being able, either through their own publishers or through the reprinters, to reach so many thousand readers, they were not a little troubled at the inaccuracy and incompleteness of much of the material sold over their names. In September, 1525, Luther writes to inquire whether his printers have not been heedless in permitting thieves or burglars to make away with “copy” or sheets for use in unauthorised printing elsewhere. “It is bad enough,” he says, “for these rascals to get the advantage, through theft, of my labour and pains, but with that I would be patient, if it were not for the shamelessly false and blundering form in which they issue books described as mine.... In looking at one of these appropriated volumes, I find here a big gap, there something entirely transposed, here a sentence falsified, and, again, an entire paragraph left without corrections. It seems to me an abominable thing that we should labour while others secure the results of our toil, leaving for us only annoyance and shame.” Luther closes his complaint, however, not with any contention for the complete control of his material, but with the very moderate suggestion that the reprinters ought, if only as a matter of Christian feeling (_aus Christlicher Liebe_), first to wait a few months in order to give to the original edition a fair chance before interfering with it, and, secondly, to print their own issues with a decent regard for correctness and completeness. In September, 1525, Luther writes to the magistrates of Nuremberg, complaining that a large portion of the proof-sheets of a volume of his sermons had been stolen from his printing-office in Wittenberg, and had been made use of in Nuremberg for the production of a piracy volume. The publication of this volume in advance of the issue of the complete work had caused his printers serious injury. (_Wodurch seinen Drückern ein merklichen Schaden zugefügt sei._) He speaks here, it is to be noted, as if the risk and ownership of this publication rested not with himself, but with his printers. He goes on to say in his letter to Nuremberg that he believes the printer Herrgott had been concerned in this affair. He begs the magistrates to use their influence with the local printers to induce them to delay bringing out reprints of his writings until seven or eight weeks after the publication of the original editions; certainly a very moderate request. He concludes, “If you can give me no help in this matter, I shall be obliged to make an open publication to warn the public against these thieves and robbers, but I should be sorry to have to print in such a connection the name of the city of Nuremberg.”[124]